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SCO granted access to additional IBM code

The SCO Group scored a small legal victory as a magistrate has ruled IBM must …

Embattled Unix vendor SCO won a small legal victory yesterday when a federal magistrate ordered IBM to provide them with additional source code to AIX and Dynix. While SCO will not get to look at IBM's code repositories, under the terms of the order, IBM will need to provide all code, notes, and design documents from 3,000 of the roughly 7,200 people who have worked on the two Unix variants by March 18.

SCO is suing IBM for incorporating source code from Unix, for which SCO claims to own the copyright, into Linux. The case has been largely quiet over the past several months, as discovery has continued and SCO's bank account balance dwindled. Most recently, the presiding judge in the case, Dale Kimball, postponed the actual trial by seven months, to November 1, 2005. Yesterday's ruling means that another delay is all but certain.

While the order can be considered a victory for SCO, in the long term it is not likely to have much of an effect on the case. Previous looks at the code have turned up nothing infringing. Back in March 2004, SCO was given 45 days to identify "all specific lines of code" that were allegedly pulled into Linux from AIX or Dynix by IBM. Still, the case goes on.

The agreement reached between SCO and its legal representation last September to cap legal fees at US$31 million (with a 33% contingency fee) has given SCO some breathing room, enabling it to continue its four-corner offense (think college hoops before the shot clock) for a while longer. The question is, how long can they go on like this? Revenues have continued to fall, as the company reported a US$6.5 million loss last quarter on revenues of US$10.1 million (down from US$1.6 million on US$24.3 million revenues the year previous). Their SCOsource licensing program has been a failure so far, and aside from an unlikely victory in court or even more-unlikely settlement with IBM, their outlook is dim, despite the ruling.